A Litigator's Guide to the Universe

Tag Archives: recency

Primacy and recency are, by far, the most popular theories of persuasion that arise in my discussions with attorneys. I have never heard an attorney mention “elaboration likelihood model,” but references to primacy and recency seem to come weekly at times. Primacy refers to the idea that what is presented most remains the most salient and, consequently, impactful for the audience. Recency is the opposite idea that an audience is most impacted by what it heard last.

Applied to a litigation setting, the primacy/recency debate translates to a popular debate about whether opening statements or closing arguments are more important. The traditional belief among lawyers (and in some respects, this author) is that opening statements are the most important part of trial. Many attorneys take primacy to an extreme, embracing a statistic that has been passed down through the ages that 70-90% of jurors make up their minds about the case after opening statements. In other words, these attorneys go as far as arguing that trial is essentially over after opening statements. Hans and Sweigart[1] offer a rich discussion of this belief in their analysis of civil jurors’ perceptions of attorneys, suggesting that this belief originated with a 1940 study[2] where researchers assessed liability judgments at eighteen different points in a mock trial and concluded that the vast majority of final verdicts were consistent with judgments made right after opening statements. Continue reading →